


Two Slow Dancers

by skellington



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Drabble, F/M, Fluff, Lost Love, Post-Canon, Reunions, idk i just love maura and the gray man, they deserve to be happy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-05
Updated: 2019-06-05
Packaged: 2020-04-08 02:24:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19097833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skellington/pseuds/skellington
Summary: Maura saw him coming. She always did.





	Two Slow Dancers

Maura saw him coming just as she did the first time-- a featureless storm of a man, carrying darkness with him, full of absent ambition. Broad shoulders, salt-and-peppered hair. Someone aged by years of not existing.

She saw him coming just the same, but this time, instead of breathing in the dark paranoia that had crowded 300 Fox Way that dreadful year, she felt she was coming up for air. Calla had grinned, slow and sharklike, as she flipped the final card. She knew just as well as Maura did.

"Lucky you. It seems your boy-toy is on his way back to town," she said.

"It seems," Maura said. Calla said something, probably cynical -- or maybe kind; she had grown softer since that dreadful year -- but Maura couldn't hear her over the buzzing in her ears. It sounded a lot like bees. She thought of Henry Cheng, who loved bees. He introduced Maura to Robobee once; a tiny dream, something he loved so fiercely that it followed him everywhere he went. The only thing to truly understand him. 

And then she thought of Richard Gansey III, who shuddered at the very mention of bees. Who died at the hands of a swarm of them, who was betrayed by the very animals who were supposed to make everything, and everyone, bloom.

Maura thought she could relate to them both.

 

 

She saw him coming, but that did not mean she was ready for the day The Gray Man walked up to the front porch of 300 Fox Way. She and Calla were outside drinking mimosas -- Calla's mixing, at her request -- while Jimi tended her herb garden. Orla painted her toes on the floor in front of them, phone wedged between her ear and shoulder. She was talking to a boy named differently from the one Maura had heard her purring to last week. Ronan Lynch, snake-headed and sharp-tongued, cursed as he tried to plant blueberry bushes in the patch of soil between the porch and the rest of the front lawn. His pet raven, fittingly named Chainsaw, kept eating the seeds.

Calla caught sight of him first and released a low whistle. 

"Maura, you have a package," she said, swallowing the rest of her mimosa and cackling as she slithered back inside.   
Ronan was not the only snake on her property.

Jimi took the hint, winked at Maura, and prodded an ogling Orla with her foot so hard she smeared her nail polish across three of her toes. They followed Calla into the house, Jimi with a handful of fresh herbs and Orla cursing with three yellow toes.

Ronan, not one to follow others, shot a long glare at The Gray Man, which The Gray Man returned. Maura understood this as a greeting, and Ronan went back to shooing Chainsaw away from the blueberry seeds.

"Mr. Gray," Maura said. She did not say,  _Dean Allen,_ because that is not his name anymore, and because the giddiness that came with saying a name so silly made Maura feel like a teenager, which she had not felt for a very long time.

"Maura," he said. His hairline pushed back some in the time since she'd last seen him, and he slimmed down a little bit. She assumed because he stopped killing people in his free time. He looked just as enrapturing as he had the first time he had knocked on her door.

"Blue will be happy to know you're back in town," she said, "but she might kick you in the shins."

"I wouldn't expect anything less." He grinned, and Maura's heart danced. Its freedom shook the very ground beneath her.

 

Blue, ever sensible, knew Mr. Gray had to leave. Blue, also ever emotional, was upset with him for doing so.

 _"It's not fair,"_ she had insisted.  _"Where does your love go? Why won't it stick with you?"_

Maura knew she was feeling guilty for a list of reasons that were not her own fault. For going to Venezuela with Henry Cheng and Richard Gansey III, for finally getting to be a teenager. For Mr. Gray leaving. For Artemus leaving. 

For falling in love not one time, but five.

For falling in love with the very boys her mother told her to stay away from; a broken one with hands that belonged to the forest, one with sharp edges and an affinity for dreaming, one whose thoughts never translated to words the way he wanted them to, one who was dead, and one who had died twice and was what made her feel most alive.

Maura smiled softly and tucked Blue into her side.

 _"My love is with you,"_ she had said.  _"With you, and Calla, and Persephone. With our house and every woman bumbling inside of it. With the trees and the stars. With your Raven Boys and their magic. With my cards, and Henrietta, and mimosas. My love exists everywhere, Blue. I am okay."_

And it wasn't a lie; Maura's love did exist in these places, in Blue most of all. 

But Mr. Gray had made her feel seen, and being seen, it turned out, was a marvelous sensation.

 

"Are you, Mr. Gray? Back in town?" Maura Sargent was not insecure. She didn't have time to be, and didn't care much to try. But Maura Sargent did value the long-lasting. She valued the stars, how even the dead ones hung in the sky. She valued the moon, and its infinite glow. She valued the years-old trees in her backyard, for they were strong enough to shelter Blue on days when she couldn't.

Maura valued the long-lasting, and the tug in her heart told her she wanted Mr. Gray to last as long as he could.

"No," he said. "I'm home."

"Good."

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> i have a lot of feelings about maura and the gray man! thanks!!!


End file.
